Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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A party, a play, a movie, and another play, including a semi-view of a semi-celebrity penis

Cosas from the past couple of weekend:

Party:
John and I made it to Carm and Nicky�s annual Tamale party late enough in the evening that all of the tamale making was done, so we escaped being put to work. Poor weather (it was raining off and on that night) canceled the traditional post dinner semi-drunken dyke basketball game, but the karaoke fest still happened.

A room full of women (both straight and non) �singing� at the top of their lungs to Girls just wanna have fun was just one of the many, many, many karaoke highlights of the evening. Others included a certain shrimpy sized lesbian friend of mine singing to The Gambler, and another woman doing a meatloaf song that only one other person in the place (John) had ever heard of. After singing for several minutes about teenagers making out in a car, she paused, then told us all that the best part of the song was over and would we mind moving onto the next song cause this one was going to go on and on and on and on, until they finally do have sex ten minutes later ending with the boy wishing he was dead. There were no objections to skipping ahead.

First Play:
We saw School for Scandal at the Mark Taper. It is an 18th century comedy dissing gossipmongers that�s still mighty humorous. There was a mixture of different stories involving an older man with a younger wife, two brothers being unknowingly tested by their rich uncle to determine who�s getting his money, and a herd of shallow, vacuous, gossipmongers.

Many of the characters have descriptive names, such as Backbite, Sneerwell, and Surface. Although Surface is not so much a description of the two brothers, but rather describes how most people don�t bother to try to go past their surface appearance, missing out on who they really are. A name as character development is an interesting conceit. I�d be interesting to know if that was a common tactic for theater back then, although not so interesting that I�ve bothered to do any research to find out.

I found the part of the story involving the uncle evaluating his two nephews interesting. There�s the �good� brother, who of course is anything but, and the �bad� one who excels in his faults, being very loose with women, drink, gambling, and money. But because there is a streak of honest goodness under the rough exterior, he is labeled a rogue, and all his excesses and faults are forgiven because of this. The American ideal of the woman ending up with the rough and tumble �real� man over the refined, and therefore �false� rival has some long roots it seems.

I enjoyed the play. It was funny, mocking, and amusing. Unfortunately a noticeable number of seats were empty when the second act started, which hopefully isn�t too bad a sign for this thing.

Movie:
I dragged Kristen to see Kinsey with me this past weekend. Seeing things in a full theater can enhance the movie going experience, but more often then not, folks are just plain annoying. A straight couple sitting a few rows behind us amazed everyone in the theater with their intellectual prowess by talking about all of the trailers, and boy, were there were a lot, each for a film more difficult and arty then the last.

After the trailer for A Long Engagement, with its French director, French stars, and no actual dialogue (since foreign film trailers generally try to hide from American audiences the need to read subtitles), the man said, �I think that may be a French movie!�

Another one was a movie that had something to do with the apparent true story of a man trying to assassinate Nixon. This one started a conversation about whether Nixon had been assassinated or not. After finally deciding that he hadn�t, the man announced that the guy in the movie must have failed. It took a huge amount of will power to not turn around and yell out �YA THINK?� They didn�t say anything during the actual movie, which was good; otherwise somebody would have gotten hurt.

The good part of the movie going experience I mentioned was that for once, everyone was laughing at the same parts. It wasn�t just Kristen and me laughing at something that presumably really wasn�t meant to be humorous. Not that this was a laugh riot kind of flick. It was very well acted and over all a very good film. I was mildly not too impressed with Vanessa Redgrave�s couple of minutes of onscreen time merely because in reviews everyone seems to hype how amazing she is and how she steals the entire movie, when in truth, she is �merely� good.

Second Play:
Jon Robin Baitz�s The Paris Letter is the second play of the season for the new Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City. It is a three-act play where by the end of the first scene, there has been some anguished male on male kissing and a violent death. A very dramatic start, though not surprising as it could have been, since there are signs in the lobby warning of that there would be herbal cigarette smoking, strong language, gunshots, and nudity on stage. Good thing there are flashbacks and that the actors play multiple roles otherwise the role of tragic suicide after five minutes on stage would have made for a less than impressive note on a resume.

The publicity for the thing says something to the effect that the story involves sex, money, and lies as a man�s life falls apart when his secrets are revealed. It isn�t quite that Wall Street scandal headline lurid, or rather that was just the starting point of telling the story of a man who lied and suppressed who he was for decades.

It was well written and had a very tightly wound story, although not so wrapped up that everything was explicitly explained. There were many things left for the audience to infer and think out for themselves. Besides the writing, it was well acted as well, with Ron Rifkin, Patricia Wettig, and Neil Patrick Harris, the former Doogie Howser, as the folks I immediately recognized.

Since the story is set up to go backwards years and decades to explain the dramatic first scene, the younger actors play two sets of roles, as contemporary young men, and as the younger versions of the older two men. There was enough effort in the physical acting and in the writing of dialogue to give each character a distinct �voice� that this wasn�t as confusing as it sounds. The multiple roles did make some very interesting casting decisions, as in some scenes a young Sandy (the main character) sees a psychiatrist played by the man playing Sandy as an older man. So in a weird way, he�s seeing himself. With Patricia Wetting as the only female actor, she ends up playing the mothers of two gay men, in both present and past, making for interesting comparisons of attitudes towards homosexuality.

Noise during the first intermission was mostly positive, though there was one woman complaining loudly that there was no way that this could work as a three act play, because so far the younger characters were simply too boring to sustain it all. I�m not quite sure were she was coming from, since by the end of the first act it was obvious that the young men of the first act weren�t that important. It was the two older men, one narrating the story about the other who were the focus of everything going on.

Maybe she was more impressed with the play later when we all got a semi-darkened theater look at Doogie�s penis. During an emotional scene a woman somewhere towards the front made an excited gasp of approval when Neil Patrick Harris strode on stage naked. I have no reason to think it was the same woman, other than the idea amuses me. I wasn�t that close to the stage, but from what I could see, Mr. Harris maybe was worth a whoop. If the stories about him having a boyfriend are true, then he has a lucky boyfriend. If not true, then hopefully somebody out the there is lucky.

John and Cricket joked that they had good play chemistry; because the three things they have seen together, Take me Out, Paint Your Wagon, andThe Paris Letter all had male nudity (though granted it was little more than a quick flash of nonexciting flesh in Wagon). The one play John missed had no nudity, and it also just happens to have been the worst of season so far. Mere coincidence?

Hmm, an all male nude version of Paint your Wagon, now that would be interesting.

More later,
nico

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